Appendix One - Response by Mr Darryl Hockey
Pursuant to Resolution 5(7)(b) of the Senate of 25 February 1988
On Wednesday 29 November 2006, at 3.23pm, Senator Glenn Sterle from Western Australia
delivered an address to the Senate generally on the subject of AWB and the
Oil-for-Food program.
In his address,
Senator Sterle stated: "There is gun-toting Trevor Flugge,
former director and chairman of AWB, who was paid $900,000 out of the AusAID
budget for a few months work in Iraq. He is a former National Party
candidate. There is Darryl Hockey, AWB's government
relations manager, who is a former adviser to the last National Party leader,
the member for Gwydir. They are part of the dirty dozen. They all have deep
National Party ties, and what a pack of crooks they are".
I wish to
correct the flagrantly inaccurate statements made by Senator Sterle:
- I am not
AWB's government relations adviser.
- I am not
one of the twelve people whom Commissioner Terence Cole referred for further
investigation by Australian law authorities following the Cole royal
commission. The so-called 'dirty dozen' was a description used by the press
across the front pages of major newspapers on Tuesday 28 November 2006
following the release of the Cole report, with photographs of the twelve people
accused. I was not one of these people. One day later, on 29 November 2006, before making his statements, Senator Sterle only had to check the front page of the
previous day's newspapers to see that I was not one of the people implicated.
- In his
final report, Commissioner Cole explicitly stated that I had no prior or
subsequent knowledge of the adverse activities which occurred. This report was
publicly released on Monday 27 November 2006, two days before Senator Sterle
made his statements. As such, the Senator had ample opportunity to check the
veracity of his statements in advance, and in my opinion the absence of such
diligence when the truth was so readily available at his fingertips is
reprehensible.
- I do not
have deep National Party ties, I have had no association with the National
Party since I finished working for Minister Anderson in 1998. In fact I worked
for a Liberal Party Minister in South Australia for three years from 1999-2001
and have held no political affiliations since that time.
- I am not a
'crook', and there is no evidence or suggestion to support the statement of Senator
Sterle. This is a slanderous and defamatory statement without any basis
whatsoever. His suggestions are a savage and unwarranted attack on my
integrity, and I believe should be redressed. I am a former Western Australian
Citizen of the Year, and have been awarded the Centenary Medal and Humanitarian
Overseas Service Medal for services to the national and international
communities.
I greatly
respect the processes of the institutions of Australia's parliamentary system,
including the important matter of privilege. However because of its potentially
damaging nature to innocent individuals, in my view parliamentarians have a
clear responsibility to take reasonable steps to establish facts from available
sources before making personal criticisms. I believe that a failure to adopt
reasonable due diligence would be considered by the broader community to be an
abuse of the important parliamentary privilege of the exercise of free speech.
DARRYL HOCKEY
South Melbourne
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